Sliding doors
SOMETIMES MISSING YOUR METAPHORICAL TRAIN IS A BLESSING, SAYS AMAL AWAD.
In my first improv acting class, after the initial awkward introduction games where we tried to learn each other’s names and not be the student who fucks up first, we were asked to complete a nervewracking task: for one minute, talk about something you love. Easy, I thought. Be pithy. Share something quirky and relatable. Describe how you love chocolate but have a unique method for eating a Mars Bar. Or how you love being the only person you know who hasn’t pledged allegiance to Game of Thrones. Sparkle! Instead, my good angel tapped me on the shoulder and quietly led me to a more honest, less clichéd approach. Tell them the truth, it intoned. So, I spoke about how I loved that I was at improv level one. That I, once an obsequious, anxiety-ridden soul who hid in her bedroom, who quelled creative desires to feel safe, was now playing grown-up improv games as she rounded out her 30s.
Like most humans, I’ve queried decisions I’ve made in life. But it truly hit me that night how wildly different my trajectory had become from the one I’d initially planned. Just like Sliding Doors – a film more memorable for Gwynnie’s hairstyle than its take on missed opportunities – who doesn't wonder what life would be like if they’d missed that train, or turned left instead of right?
Consider me 20 years ago. I’m exiting my awkward, disappointingly vanilla adolescence and getting a taste of freedom at university. Rather than plunging straight into overdue rebellion, I take the path of least resistance and play it safe, wrapping myself up in religion and culture (literally and metaphorically speaking, if you consider my decade wearing a veil). I soon forget my childish teenage ambitions to one day be a stage performer, compartmentalising my gloriously naïve jam sessions in my bedroom, where I sing along to musical theatre favourites on cassette. I decide the world is not ready for a hijab-clad Maria.
Instead, I am a lawyer for a time, a path I quickly tire of. Arguably, this is my first Sliding Doors moment – a life of reading contracts, or accepting the temporary parental disappointment that comes with pursuing words? (Dear reader, I went with the latter, and while those rumours about money in the arts are true, I’d like to believe I’m creatively fulfilled.)
Meanwhile, my parents’ living room doubles as a real-life version of halal Tinder for several years, before we move awkward suitor meetings to cafés, then do away with them altogether. What if I had pursued ‘The Ideal’ and married at 20 like I’d intended? Perhaps children would have followed, potentially the IKEA home, and very likely the smallness of my life would have expanded to encapsulate everyone else’s happiness. Instead, I said no to lots of guys. I took off the headscarf. And at 30, I moved out of home.
By not giving in to The Ideal, the temporary pain of loneliness could expand into possibility and discovery. I cared about other things; discovered desires hidden from view; remembered ideas forgotten. And yes, I got married, but later in life, and to the baldest, whitest guy on the planet (his words). And yes, theatre found me again, even if it was in a class of like-minded souls who find relief in creative expression.
It’s not always about negotiating two distinct pathways. Life is more like a Choose Your Own Adventure book. But there are some things you just can’t get around, or paint over, or in the deepest parts of yourself, forget. There are Sliding Doors moments aplenty, and they all matter. Truthfully, I feel some reassuring, profound gratitude for all the times I’ve missed my train.